Aberystwyth Mon Amour

'Louie!'

'It's OK, don't speak!'

'I ... love . . . you!'

'There, there . . .'

'The essay . . .'

'No, no! Don't talk!'

And then as if at the exact moment her spirit left her she gripped me with a terrifying new strength.

'The essay . . .' she gasped desperately, 'it's in the stove!'

The grip broke and her head fell with a thud on to the tarmac glistening with her blood.

The police car skidded into view at the far end of the Prom and I looked at the murderer's car, engine still running, and realised where I'd seen it before. It was mine.

Chapter 16

I SIPPED MY coffee and read Meirion's editorial about Bianca:

It is almost a week since the tragic death of Sioned Penmaenmawr, better known to the denizens of our notorious entertainment district as 'Bianca'. A girl who cocked her final snook at the society that cast her out by being buried in her night-club costume. By now most people will already have begun to forget about her; and the rest will never have cared in the first place. More fool them. The photo of the miserable funeral at Llanbadarn Cemetery on Tuesday contains a message for us all. There were four mourners at the sad interment. Her close friend Myfanwy Montez; Detective Inspector Llunos; a photographer from this newspaper; and a solitary figure who passing by felt the touch of pity in his heart. Wearing a dirty old coat tied up with packing string, his face dirty and lined with the years of suffering, it was a man only too familiar with the condition of exile from the hearthside of the Aberystwyth good life: a Patagonian War veteran. His lot it was that afternoon to teach us all not only the meaning of the word 'pity', but also alas, the meaning of shame.

The War veteran with the coat tied up with packing string had been me. Had Meirion known? It was hard to see how he could have done. I went to the funeral in the hope of speaking to Myfanwy, but she stayed too close to Llunos the whole time and rushed off in his car immediately afterwards. Llunos said in the newspaper that he was desperate to talk to me in connection with the death, which they were treating as a tragic hit-and-run, but he didn't mention that I locked him in the toilet.

Ever since the night she died I had been hiding in the caravan. I still didn't know how I survived: standing over her dead body, the car that killed her — my car — parked nearby with the engine still running, the police only seconds away. In a situation like that the only thing to do is make a decision. Any one, it hardly matters. The one I made was to jump in the car with Bianca's blood and tissue still smeared across the grille and drive off. She was dead, I could see that. And if by some miracle she wasn't, the police would be better able to help than I was. So I saved myself. As the police car screeched to a halt I did a U-turn, turned right at the Castle and over Trefechan Bridge; then I pulled off on to the track leading to Tan-y-Bwlch beach. From there I abandoned the car and set off on foot across the darkened fields and over the Iron Age hill fort. The plan was to double back, making a wide arc around the town, and head for the caravan in Ynyslas. It took me four hours, but I did it.

Since then, the weather had closed right in with expanses of dove-grey clouds filling the sky; it was cold and windy and moisture hung in the air ready to occasionally spit at the windows of the caravan. I didn't go out much, but when I did, the disguise as a War veteran worked well. Such was the stigma, most folk simply averted their gaze when they saw one.

There was a knock on the caravan door. I opened it and Calamity burst in.

'Take your time, won't you?'

'Sorry, I didn't hear you.'

'It's freezing out there, like the middle of winter.'

'It's all right, I've made coffee, that will warm you up.'

She took off her anorak and walked over to the table. 'I've made some progress.'

'Oh yeah?'

'It could be the breakthrough we've been waiting for.'

She opened her school satchel and pulled out three books. I picked them up and read the titles. 'On Pools of Love by Joyce Moonweather; Governing a Sloop by Captain Marcus Trelawney; Towards a New Pathology of Slovenliness by Dr Heinz X. Nuesslin.' I put the books down.

'I got them from the school library. You won't believe who was the last person to borrow them.'

'Brainbocs?'

'No. Guess again.'

'Sorry, chum, that's my best effort.'

'You won't believe it.'

'Amaze me.'

'Evans the Boot!'

I picked up the New Pathology of Slovenliness and examined the flyleaf. 'Maybe we misjudged him all along.'

'I don't think so. Look at the title page.'

Obediently I opened the book. Letters were missing from the title page, crudely cut out with scissors leaving jagged edges.

'He got into trouble for it, you see. That's how I knew. I remember hearing this story ages ago about how he turned up at the library one day and borrowed all these weird books. And then when he returned them he'd cut them up. So I checked on his record which ones they were.'

I opened the other two books; each one had been vandalised in the same way.

'OK, clever-clogs, what does it mean?'

As if impatiently waiting for this question she took out a piece of paper and unfolded it.

'These are the letters he cut out: O.V.E.N.L.O.O.P.S.'

'You still got me.'

'Rearrange them.'

I stared at the paper for a second and then it hit me. 'Lovespoon!'

'That's right!'

'So what does it all mean?'

'What do people use cut-out letters for?'

I shrugged.

'Blackmail notes of course. He was blackmailing the Welsh teacher. No wonder they did him in.'

I thought about the significance of it for a few seconds but it did little to lift my depression.

'Don't get carried away with excitement will you?'

'Sorry, Calamity, I'm sitting here wanted for the murder of a prostitute. It's difficult to get excited about things.'

'But this is the way we're going to clear your name.'

'I don't see how.'

'Evans was blackmailing Lovespoon. Why? Because he copied Brainbocs's homework and found out something incriminating about the teacher. What else do we know about Evans? He stole a rare tea cosy from the Museum. Now it's my guess these two facts are related.'

'Sure, but what's the link?'

'I don't know. We haven't got all the pieces of the jigsaw yet.'

'But it doesn't really take us forwards. We already know why Lovespoon killed Evans.'

She looked at me, the frustration bringing tears to her eyes. 'We have to explore every angle, Louie. We have to be thorough, we're building a case, sod it!'

'OK. What else have you got?'

She pushed the books away and placed her palms flat down on the table. 'Operation "stove-search" not so good. Bianca could have hidden the essay in any number of stoves. I tried yours but Mrs Llantrisant wouldn't let me into the kitchen. She said you wouldn't be needing a stove, clean or otherwise, where you were going. It would be bread and water down at Cwmtydu Prison for you from now on.'

'I'm touched she has so much confidence in me.'

'She said, "You never really know anyone, do you?" Then I went to Bianca's flat and tried there but it was cordoned off and the policeman wouldn't let me in. I said I'd come to clean the stove and he said he'd never heard such a load of codswallop in all his life. I waited till he was replaced by another policeman. Then I tried again and this time I said I wanted to go and see my auntie who lived above Bianca and was ninety years old and very frail and I had to check up on her now and again just to make sure she wasn't dead.'